Talk politics.

And it's just as fun as ever.



If you’ve never been to Eastern Europe, you might not be familiar with the Slavic squat, but we’ll be happy to educate you today. Because Slavic countries have not only gifted the world with delicious borscht, gorgeous pottery and impressive wood carving, they’ve also provided us with plenty of entertainment online!

So here are 35 Hilarious Pics And Memes That Hit Too Close To Home If You Grew Up In Eastern Europe:
https://www.boredpanda.com/squatting-slavs-in-tracksuits-funny-pics/

Hungary’s controversial anti-LGBT law goes into effect despite EU warnings:
A new law that bans the dissemination of content in schools deemed to promote homosexuality and gender change went into effect Wednesday despite a warning from Europe’s top rights watchdog that the law risks discrimination against LGBT people.

Ehm... "the law is necessary to ensure that the sexual education of children under 18 is the sole domain of parents.".... Oh we're OK then!

But srsly. It is virtually impossible to throw Hungary out of the EU. But, they can stop his EU funds and make life very difficult for the Hungarians. However, Germany is making a bit of cash from Hungary so has little interest in kicking him out. See the Realpolitik here?

If Hungary left the EU, Vlad would be over the Moon, so the people of Hungary wouldn't allow it, at the expense of Orban of course. Currently he's on a power trip and I suspect will become even more of a pain to the EU than before. What he's really after here is control of the education curriculum, so he can use it as a propaganda machine. Learning from the Chinese he is.

Oh, and Poland has been doing something similar for, like, ages now.

"Just face it, West Europe and East Europe have different values", one EMP argued. Yeah. "Family" vs "Queer". That's how it's being viewed around here. And we're supposed to be livingi in the 21st century. Go figure.

Greetings, comrades! We've talked in previous years about May 24, which is a huge holiday for about a quarter billion people around the world, those using the Cyrillic alphabet. While it may seem a bit alien to people in the West who aren't familiar with it, it's actually very similar to the Latin script, because they both emerged from the Greek alphabet (in fact, Cyrillic letters are even closer to Greek than the Latin ones, and even their order in the alphabet is much more similar). Most people in the West associate this alphabet with Russia, I suppose, although it was neither created there nor was it originally spread from there - it's just that Russia is the biggest and most influential Slavonic country at the moment, hence the association (and all the jokes and memes, particularly ones related to the so called Faux Cyrillic). There are some variations of the script varying from country to country, serving the specific phonetic needs of each country, but in general, the basis of the alphabet is shared by all nations who use it.

Anyway; the story behind the creation and adoption of the Cyrillic alphabet has been discussed at great length here, so I'm not going to occupy you with it again. You can read it in more detail under that link and in the links provided there. This is just a short greeting to all folks of Slavonic origin and background, and everyone using or familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet in general, and of course to those appreciating Slavonic culture and tradition. To all: NAZDRAVE / CHEERS!

A little known day of celebration to most Westerners, that's for sure. Today is the day of the Cyrillic alphabet, which is celebrated in parts of Eastern Europe, particularly Bulgaria, Serbia and Macedonia, and also Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and most of the Central Asian republics (Mongolia has exclusively used the Cyrillic too in the past). It's also the season of the proms around here, and a time when education, culture, knowledge, and literature are celebrated. In commie times there used to be huge parades in the street; as soon as democracy "exploded" here these were temporarily abandoned, as people somehow associated them with socialism; but in recent times there's been a resurgence of this tradition.

( More about May 24 )

Greetings, comrades folks! The other day marked 3 decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall. As for yesterday, no doubt November 10 is a very symbolic day for my society. On this very day, exactly 30 years ago, democracy "exploded" here in Bulgaria. Well, maybe not exactly. But it felt like that at the time, at least for a while. One thing is for sure, though. Things haven't been the same ever since. Even if only prompted by events abroad, we did do our best attempt to erase and forget the past, sometimes with more success, sometimes with less. But the idea was there. However, one'd think that some things can't go away just like that. You'd think it would take several generations for a society to completely shake off the legacy of the past, especially if that system had been ingrained into people's brains for decades, ultimately distorting the very culture of said society, and the mentality of its people. No, good things don't just happen overnight.

Really, we've gone through all sorts of hardships for the last three decades, all sorts of transformations, and we've experienced what it's like to learn the lessons of history within a very compressed period, and catch up with what the rest have achieved in many decades, but learn it all the hard way. We saw the ugly face of "wild capitalism", while we were kicking out the memory of communism. We saw the Al Capone era being played out right in front of our eyes. We saw what hyper-inflation means, what queueing for bread with food coupons means, what "baseball-bat business" is, what Thug-o-Baroque architecture, lifestyle and mentality looks like - we've seen it all. But, at the end of the day it was all worth it. Hell, it really was!

And probably all that remains now to remind us of that "Time Long, Long Ago", is the various memorabilia remaining from the commie times, which are gathering more dust as the time passes, only to fuel the feeling of nostalgia among the fading older generations. And of course the awesome anecdotes from the time of the "Sotz" (as we used to call socialism), which were being whispered with half a mouth; the sharply humorous and penetrating caricatures of the Sotz leaders that were being spread around like apocrypha; and the stinging lyrics of Vysotsky, the genius "Bard of Freedom".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkojGf_u2uI
You know the drill. In order to proceed reading, first you'll have to play that song in the background. ;-)

( Ah, memories..... )